The Fallen Man
by Avenue Potter
Summary: Don Draper/Peggy Olson. Don Draper falls to his inevitable death. And Peggy discovers what remains of him. Thanks to EM Porter for the beta!
1. Part 1

Peggy settles into the main conference room at McCann-Erickson where the team is brainstorming ideas for Coca-Cola. And just about the time it's her turn to voice one of her ideas, she sees the spider.

Or what she thinks is a spider.

Falling past the window.

It goes by so quickly.

"Hey! Was that a man?" someone next to her shouts.

"Oh my god! I think someone just leapt from the building," said another, pushing back his chair and running for the windows on the other side of the conference room.

"Don," she whispers.

As everyone frantically jostles for a view at the windows, Peggy stands up slowly and gathers her thoughts.

The elevators. She has to go.

As she pushes her way through the crowds in the lobby and onto the street, her breath catches in her throat. She sees the pulsating crowd. The people shouting for help. She knows she has to go there – has to see.

She shoves against the bodies all straining to get a look at what had fallen from the rooftop of the skyscraper. Pushes arms, elbows, hips, legs - anything that's in her way. When she finally breaks through, the breath that had caught in her throat is forced out by the bile coming up. She falls to her knees, vomiting all over the front of her suit.

Pure gore lies spread before her. More blood than she's ever seen. Could a human body hold so much blood? But this isn't a body. This is a flat pool of flesh, like someone had splattered dark sticky red paint and subsequently gotten ashes on it. For that's what the tattered remains of his black suit look like, wisps of ash floating in the breeze, yet still stuck to the gore beneath them.

"Unrecognizable."

"Unidentifiable."

"I wonder who he was?"

As Peggy wipes off the drops of vomit stuck to her chin, the breeze picks up. She watches in horror as one of those pieces of tattered cloth gets caught in the wind, free of its morbid confines, and blows towards her. It smacks her on the cheek and she yelps. It blows away and disappears before she can even swat it away with her hand.

"Are you okay, miss?" someone asks, peering down at her.

In a daze she gets up off of her knees, and standing, touches her cheek. She feels nothing, but she knows the blood is there. Just like she knows it's Don Draper on the pavement.

"Yes, I'm alright," she says and then proceeds to walk back to the lobby of McCann-Erickson.


	2. Part 2

Don had skulked around McCann-Erickson's offices for almost two hours, waiting for Peggy to leave hers. The brim of his fedora was pulled low, a 'borrowed' trench coat was draped over his dark suit, and his face was buried in various magazines that had been left about all over. It was easy to get lost in the shuffle at McCann-Erickson. If you wanted to be lost.

Finally there was a hubbub and excited conversations bubbled about the hallways and common areas. Don caught wisps of 'Coca-Cola' from their pieces of conversations. Many people were heading towards the main conference room. Peggy's office door opened.

He turned around in his chair so his back was towards her door, and slouched down into a poor posture so he would be even less recognizable to her. And then he listened.

Quick clicks of confident heels came out of that office. Steps close together. She shut the door behind her.

"Peggy!" someone called from the conference room.

"I'm coming," the woman in the heels yelled back. Don could hear her adjust something in her arms and take a few steps down the hall. But then she stopped.

Don's heart was racing and his breath became uneven, but he managed to slink down even further in his chair in an attempt to escape her notice. _Not now Peggy, not now. I need to do this._

"Harrumph" she sighed and continued down the hallway to the main conference room. The door shut behind her and now all of the hallways were deserted. Even the secretaries seemed to have all gone on unauthorized coffee breaks at the same time, which was fortuitous.

He left the trench coat on the chair, got up, and slowly pushed open the door to Peggy's office. Unexpectedly tears sprang to his eyes when he looked around and saw, really saw how far she had come – and the gravity of the situation hit him. He finally knew how lucky he was to have been a part of her career growth. And he realized that Peggy was probably the only good thing he had fostered in his entire life. In that moment, he was so incredibly proud of her that he felt like his heart was bursting – and it was uncomforatable.

It was time to do what he came for. He wiped his eyes with his handkerchief, sniffed, and then folded it neatly and put it back into his suit pocket. It was not the time to get lost in nostalgia.

He opened his satchel and took out the notebook, running his fingertips over her name, 'Peggy Olson,' printed on the masking tape one more time. It was rough.

He placed it softly on her desk and walked out the door.

* * *

The elevator ride to the roof was forgettable.

But the view was not.

New York was where he had chosen to make himself. Make Don Draper.

But who was Don Draper?

A man who only moved in one direction.

Taking that final step. . .

Forward.


	3. Part 3

"It's like no one cares that I'm gone."

Don blinked.

His daze was broken.

And he listened to Leonard's story.

* * *

Later, he found himself with two days on his hands and an empty room. The one he had shared with Stephanie. Before she had left without saying goodbye.

"Do you have a notebook?" Don asked the hippie chick with the red ribbons braided into her hair. She was standing behind what passed for a front desk at the retreat in California where he was now stranded.

"No, but I think I've got a journal or two . . . " she ducked underneath the counter, "No wait! I think I found something. Will this do?"

She handed him a dark brown notebook of sorts that was almost like a journal in its format. It had yellowing pages and looked like it had been here since the early '50s.

"Do you have a pen?"

"I've got this one – but it's almost out." She handed him a crude black marker. "And we've got pencils. Plenty of pencils."

"Those will do."

As she forked over a large stash of pencils, a sharpener, and an eraser, Don stopped her. "I don't think I'll be needing that eraser."

"No?"

"No." He wanted to get it all down. No edits. There was no point in editing any more.

He ran his hand over the brown glossy surface of the notebook and realized that there was nowhere to write on the front.

"I need to put a name on this. Do you have any way to label it?"

"I've got masking tape."

"That will have to do."

* * *

He sat back on the creaking bed in its pathetic frame and pulled the ashtray near him. The notebook lay on the nightstand next to his pack of cigarettes, naked without a name on it. The masking tape lay beside it – waiting.

He shook out a cigarette, lit it and took a long draw. He looked up at the ceiling of this little cottage by the sea, noticing the dingy beams holding up the roof, not paying any attention to the gorgeous California sunset outside. As he exhaled, his gaze fell back down to the notebook and tape. He tapped off the ashes at the end of his cigarette and set it in the ashtray.

Masking tape and an old notebook. Don shook his head. He wished he had something better for her.

He rolled off a piece of the tape and adhered it to the front of the notebook where a proper label should have been. He uncapped the marker and printed the name, "Peggy Olson" carefully onto the rough, gritty tape. It was the last name this marker would ever write since the ink faded with the "n" in Peggy's last name. He unceremoniously threw the marker into the trash and took another drag of his cigarette.

Two days. How was he going to sit with this for two days?

* * *

"Come home." She'd said it twice. No, insisted twice. But there was nowhere to go. Nowhere left to run from himself.

"What did you ever do that was so bad?" she had asked him sympathetically when he told her that he wasn't the man she thought he was. That had triggered something inside of him. He broke down. Admitting parts of the truth. The parts he could put words to. Trying to make her understand that he truly was a bad man. Just like they'd all said.

But it was in vain.

"That's not true," she had insisted. She denied him his faults. The ugly pieces of himself that he had finally come to accept on this long journey of life, always simmering below the surface. Somehow Peggy saw good in him. Couldn't accept how truly irredeemable he was. She'd never been able to see it – to truly see him. Even when he denied her requests for raises - yelled at her in the office – made her privy to his multitude of infidelities. Hell, she still believed in him. She had tried to entice him back to New York with the promise of working on the Coca-Cola campaign.

He shouldn't have called. He had just wanted to hear her voice. Somehow he had known that she was the one person who still believed in him – and he wanted just one person. Just one. But he shouldn't have. She didn't know him. Didn't know the truth.

The truth.

The truth had shocked him. Shocked him to his core. He had made nothing of himself. Was nothing. Had no one. And never did. He had gripped the chair he had been sitting on, shaking. It was finally over.

* * *

"Goodbye Peggy," he whispered as he ran his shaking fingers over her name on the masking tape.

That night he dreamt. Dreamt of Leonard.


	4. Part 4

"Who the fuck is Leonard?" Peggy says with indignation.

* * *

There is an old notebook lying on her desk when she returns from the horror on the street. It has her name on it. Written in black marker on masking tape. If this was put together by a colleague, they had done a piss-poor job.

She has better things to do with her day. Like get Don off her mind. Forward. He had always told her to move forward. So that is what she is trying to do.

But she keeps the notebook in the center of her desk. Always there underneath everything. With each pile of work accomplished it's revealed – under the office lights the glossy sheen of its cover gleams back at her. She buries it with new work. Yet it always resurfaces.

When there's no more work left to do and the hustle and bustle of the day has settled, she figures she'll have to take a look at this thing . . . this shoddy piece of work, or personal business – not marked that way - which irritates her, or whatever it's supposed to be.

Everything inside had been written in pencil. Against fading yellow pages. Who would do that? After she gives it a cursory look, flips through the pages, she sees one name besides hers over and over: Leonard. What is this?

Curiosity piqued, she sits forward at her desk and opens the notebook. It's filled with rambling thoughts. Snippets of information scattered here and there. But there's something about the voice, the train of thought . . .

"Don?"


	5. Part 5

_. . . Peggy – I held on to Leonard for dear life. Because I knew it was ending._

Don put the pencil down and looked out of the window of the cottage, remembering the window in his office at McCann-Erickson. How he had pressed against it, testing its strength. How he had pulled away – scared and bit perturbed by his own thoughts. He hadn't been ready. Not yet.

But he had known for a very long time. Ever since he went to Hawaii with Megan and felt the allure of shedding his skin, leaving the husk of his body on the beach while the waves swept his soul away. The jumping off point.

He had already decided how he was going to release his tormented soul. He had decided that day in his office.

He went back to the notebook.

 _The shelf._

He drew a picture of a refrigerator with a bottle of Coke on one of its shelves. It looked so desolate and alone, even surrounded by so many other things. His life had been full of other things. Delusions of happiness in marriage, superficial camaraderie wrapped up in business affairs, and sex masquerading as companionship. These things were distractions. Distractions he used to mask his deep sadness - to make it less potent. Less real.

 _Companions. Beyond the door._

 _Just beyond reach._

 _It is out there._

 _But not for you._

Whore child. Born in sin. Dick.

 _You are never chosen and the door closes._

 _Never._

Drunk. Womanizer. Liar.

 _The light goes off._

On the opposite page he drew a picture of a light bulb emanating light and drew happy stick figures around it holding hands.

Then he drew a dim one and cast a figure in the shadow of a refrigerator door between them. He then drew a shelf for the figure to sit on.

Don turned the page.

 _Leonard understands. He said that he doesn't really know what IT is - no one will give it to him._

 _I don't know what IT is either. But I can see that others have it. Hell, I've sold it._

 _But it is an experience Leonard & I will never have._

 _Because we are not worthy of it._

Many pages later. . .

 _But everyone wants IT – whether they deserve it or not. Whether they get it or not. Everyone._

He shut the notebook.

Another night he must sit with this.

He crawled into bed and curled up in the fetal position, hugging his knees. There was no alcohol here. He could only cry. Like he did with Leonard – the man who understood. Don was alone during the night with only his thoughts and the darkness - he had to face some hard truths without any alcohol to numb the pain. He had accepted the fact that he was a terrible person who had done nothing but inflict pain on those who might have tried to give IT to him. But he could never see it, never feel it – was never sure it was real. And the door had always inevitably closed, leaving him in the dark, alone. There was no point in chasing it anymore. For him it would never exist. There was nothing left for him to do but die.

* * *

He awakened to overly bright sun, rolled over, and immediately opened to a new page in the notebook, a fresh thought on his mind. Something he could leave behind. Something besides his flesh.

 _Peggy – sell it to them. The real thing._

 _Make them buy it. Make them choose it._

 _We just want to be chosen._

He wrote his last inspired thought, scrawling it upon the next page:

" _Buy the world a Coke and keep it company"_

He smiled sadly. If only he could buy it. But at least he - no Peggy - could give others the hope that they could buy it. False hope. The commodity he'd been selling most of his life.


	6. Part 6

Peggy's hands turn the paper to the final page. The final page of this assorted mess of blurbs, passages, and single words. This page holds clarity in its simplicity.

She presses down on it, spreading the page flat, getting pencil dust on her palms, blurring the letters. Don's final words were written in such a transient medium.

 _This is all I have made of myself._

 _This is my legacy._

 _I give it to you._

She takes a deep breath. The flat thing on the pavement wasn't Don. This is Don.

Her hand flutters to her cheek once again where the cloth had kissed her. This time her fingers come away with flecks of dried blood. She knows he is there.

She carefully closes the notebook and runs her fingers over her name on the rough masking tape.

"Goodbye, Don."


End file.
